Removal of Priest’s Cases Exposes Deep Holes in Immigration Courts

Father Bob Vitaglione, a Catholic priest who has been a representative in immigration court for decades, was recently ordered to stop doing legal work for immigrants.Credit
Mylan Cannon/The New York Times

For more than three decades, Robert Vitaglione never turned down a client, representing thousands of immigrants in New York’s overburdened federal immigration courts. But he is not a lawyer. He is a Roman Catholic priest without formal legal training or supervision — and it showed.

Disheveled and disorganized, Father Vitaglione sometimes jeopardized cases with his erratic behavior, according to a federal finding. His legal briefs included a blizzard of fonts and asides — “Deportation = Death” was written in bold in one.

In May, court administrators had enough, barring Father Vitaglione from handling cases. But if anything, that only deepened the disarray. Lawyers and advocates had to hold emergency meetings to figure out how to pick up his pending cases, clean up bungled ones, and find representation for untold immigrants.

Father Vitaglione’s central role in the immigration courts, as well as the repercussions from his recent banishment, point to the deep dysfunction in the system in New York and across the country.

Thousands of poor immigrants swamp the system every month in the city alone, challenging deportation orders or other administrative actions, but they are not entitled to free legal representation, as they are in criminal courts. As a result, federal immigration judges, eager for respondents to have any sort of help, overlook problems with volunteers like Father Vitaglione.

The immigration courts have long allowed nonlawyers to represent clients if they can show some proficiency in the law. New York has dozens of these so-called accredited representatives. But none had the caseload or recognition of Father Vitaglione, who was known inside the courthouses as Father Bob. He had more clients than the Legal Aid Society’s entire immigration unit.

Viewed as a hero in religious circles and a menace in legal ones, Father Vitaglione, 63, accepted no fees. In an interview in the basement of his parish at Sacred Heart Church in Fort Greene, near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he admitted to becoming overwhelmed, but defended his work as an almost spiritual calling.

“We have more lawyers than we have fire hydrants in this city and no one will help,” he said.

He called immigrants facing deportation “the lepers of today.”

“If Jesus was here,” Father Vitaglione said, “these are the people he’d be sitting down with.”

The stakes could hardly be higher. Immigrants who have spent years in the United States often consider deportation a worse punishment than a jail sentence.

But many immigrants have to represent themselves, even if they do not speak English or understand the law. In New York City in 2009, 60 percent of detained immigrants did not have counsel; neither did 27 percent of nondetained immigrants who appeared in immigration court, according to government statistics.

Rulings often hinge on representation in these courts, where defendants accused of immigration violations, from overstaying a visa to committing a violent crime, face government lawyers and the threat of deportation. Immigrants without lawyers are more than five times as likely to lose their cases, legal advocates found in a report released in May.

Immigrants who represent themselves also slow down a system with no room for slack. Each judge’s docket can reach 2,000 cases, and immigrants without lawyers are left with only judges to explain technicalities, help with paperwork and assume some responsibilities of counsel.

“He helped part of the system and the system kept rolling,” said Stan Weber, an immigration lawyer who said he admired Father Vitaglione. “It comes down to everything being overwhelmed and the system being broken and he didn’t realize he can’t do this anymore.”

But others said Father Vitaglione’s caseload papered over a crisis in representation.

“He was allowing the court system to operate as if people were being represented when they really were not,” said Amy Meselson, an immigration lawyer with the Legal Aid Society. “It was really pernicious because it was really masking a problem.”

Few question Father Vitaglione’s dedication or his compassion for immigrants’ plights. On a recent evening in Brooklyn, he and two associates met individually with roughly 40 immigrants — Albanian, Jamaican, Peruvian, Mexican — filling out papers and offering advice until well after dark.

Photo

Despite the sanctions, Father Bob and his staff still have immigrants lining up to meet with him.Credit
Mylan Cannon/The New York Times

He has helped countless immigrants over the years in matters large and small. He filled out the forms that Juan Mego Suarez, a native of Peru, needed to renew his green card last year. “Everything was fixed, thanks to the father,” said Mr. Suarez, 49.

“Their mission was accomplished — now they had this person on the docket with representation,” Mr. Weber said. “They clearly were a factor in him becoming overwhelmed.”

Father Vitaglione was listed as the representative in 761 working cases in June 2010, according to the Board of Immigration Appeals, a workload exponentially higher than what even highly trained lawyers say they could manage.

“We’re like the Babylonian prostitutes,” he said. “We never say no.”

But as his client list grew, his work slipped. The Legal Aid Society said it filed eight complaints against him over the past five years. The Department of Homeland Security determined last year that he had mishandled at least six cases.

“We cannot excuse his failings as an accredited representative, or overlook the impact his performance has had on the low-income and indigent aliens who have relied upon his services,” the federal Board of Immigration Appeals wrote in its May 6 decision barring him from court. The board determined that Father Vitaglione had failed to appear or came unprepared to hearings in 221 cases.

Last year, according to the findings, he failed to inform a client of her hearing date, and, in her absence, the court ordered her deported.

In a case in 2009, he never showed up for a hearing, and his client, a Dominican man, was ordered deported. In another case cited by the Board of Immigration Appeals, he filed an appeal brief almost a year after the board had rendered a final decision. The scarcity of other lawyers willing to represent poor immigrants, the board wrote in May, “does not relieve Rev. Vitaglione of his responsibility to provide competent representation in each case he accepts.”

The decision echoed across the state. The Legal Aid Society said it had caused a sharp rise in immigrants needing representation.

Still, some lawyers said they viewed the crisis as an opportunity to address inadequate legal representation in the courts.

On a recent morning, less than two months after the board ruling, Father Vitaglione was back at immigration court in his clerical collar, entering the special door reserved for lawyers. There were 28 cases on the calendar that day, and his network represented half of them.

He was mistakenly listed as the representative for one, his nonprofit organization was down for another, and Tim McCarthy, a lawyer with whom he works in Brooklyn, was listed for 12 more.

A version of this article appears in print on July 8, 2011, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Removal of Priest’s Cases Exposes Deep Holes in Immigration Courts. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe